Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar took an aggressive tone on Wednesday when a media tracker for her GOP opponent, state Republican Rep. Kurt Bills, asked her to respond to a recent investigation by The Daily Caller into her past.
“They are untrue allegations,” Klobuchar said. “And, if your candidate has some actual thing he wants to bring forward as a criminal charge, he better bring it to a prosecuting authority, because I’m doing my work as a United States Senator.”
But neither the Bills campaign nor any publication has directly alleged Klobuchar committed illegal activity – only that she misused the power of her office or was derelict in her duty. The statement was a deflection from the specific allegations in the article.
Watch the encounter:
The Daily Caller reported Oct. 19 that documents show Klobuchar helped keep Ponzi-schemer Tom Petters out of prison for years by choosing to prosecute only his early co-conspirators. Petters’ scheme later grew to involve $3.65 billion in assets, and is the third-largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. (RELATED: View the documents)
Those documents show Klobuchar had enough evidence to target Petters during the early years of his criminal enterprise. Petters and his employees contributed more than $120,000 to Klobuchar’s campaigns for county attorney and U.S. Senate.
The Bills campaign media tracker had been asking Klobuchar to address specific details on the Petters documents she had obtained in 1999 and refused to act on.
A Klobuchar spokeswoman has not answered follow-up questions about the senator’s comments on this tape.
After initially attempting to delay publication of TheDC’s investigation, and then refusing comment, Klobuchar’s campaign spokesman Linden Zakula issued statements that denied allegations never leveled against Klobuchar.
Klobuchar herself continues refusing requests for interviews, and her spokespeople won’t answer specific questions about the report.